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 Alexander Mosaic 

Pompeii and Alexander

The Alexander Mosaic was a floor mosaic made in 100BC and situated between two gardens in the House of Faun, in Pompeii, Rome. As much as Pompeii is a famous tourist spot since the late 1800s for its attractions such as the Villa of Mysteries, Temple of Isis, the Stabian Baths and the House of Faun, it was also referred to as “the city of the dead.” The entrance to Pompeii itself is through the “Street of Tombs,” so as much as it was a great archaeological site it was also a funerary. It fascinatingly brought the ancient world to “life” to tourists that was buried away thousands of years ago, a previous era. The modern gaze of the nineteenth-century and twentieth-century tourists believed sites such as the House of Faun could give them an insight into the daily life of the Romans by seeking the ancient past that was revealed. They were interested in what is known about the House of Faun and Alexander the Great but not how we know what we know about the potential copy of a Greek painting from the Classical Period. The belief that history should be entertaining and exciting, with a good dose of divine intervention and miraculous happenings continues to be extremely popular amongst visitors of ancient paintings, sculptures and mosaics such as the Alexander Mosaic. What is truly Hellenistic and what is Roman?

Though parts of the mosaic are distorted and unclear, the elevation at which Darius III (and his chariot) was shown compared to Alexander, placing his grief on prominent display. The reason why Alexander’s side of the mosaic was more distorted and damaged was because viewers tended to stand where Alexander was and picture the Battle of Issus from his perspective, taking in Darius's fear from a better standing and allowing young Romans to imagine themselves as Alexander The Great. Finally, the chaotic horses and fallen soldiers at the very front of the artwork create the mood and the atmosphere of an intense battle scene at a first glance. While the horses leashed to the chariot are seen frantically and suddenly trying to shift the direction of the chariot away from Alexander, the rest are seen fallen to the ground. This aesthetic definition helps portray the represented scene (Battle of Eos) in a well-defined, memorable, self-sufficient and representational form.

Tesserae and Naturalism

Tesserae was used by Apelles for its play of irregular color that depicts a greater range of hues in comparison to a perfectly even colored medium. This medium was used effectively to create light, shadow, and reflection. The soldier who has been knocked to the ground by the fleeing chariot can be seen in a clear moment of introspection, staring at the reflection of his own face on a shield, just before the moment of his own death. Similarly, all the horses' flanks in the mosaic also display tonal gradation, where colors transition gradually from a lighter to a darker one.

All of the figures from humans to horses are rendered with a sense of three-dimensional, naturalistic modelling. The Alexander Mosaic (8 ft 11 in × 16 ft 10 in) is made up of approximately 1.5 million tesserae, which are small, cubed pieces of glass or stones cut into shape. The mostly earth-colored stones are remarkably tiny and used to emphasize the details of the scene. They are laid down in a style known as opus vermiculatum, a technique which is identified as "worm-like" due to the curved lines of tesserae placed to emphasize features and figures within the work. By the late classical period and into the Hellenistic period, representations of figures had shifted from classical idealism to humanistic depictions which emphasised realistic anatomy and emotion, as is evident here.

References

1.Ferro, L. (2021, March 15). ''The alexander mosaic and the House of the faun (pompeii VI, 12, 1-8). geometry proportions and art of composition''. IRIS. Retrieved November 29, 2022, from https://re.public.polimi.it/handle/11311/1048272

2. Lee, A. D. (2006, April 12). The alexander mosaic: The classical review. Cambridge Core. Retrieved November 29, 2022, from https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/classical-review/article/alexander-mosaic/86A53229D65B42DBA2C12FF958A9D611

3. Ferro, L. (2019). ''The Alexander Mosaic and the House of the Faun. The Iconic Light of Geometric Relationships.'' In: Cocchiarella, L. (eds) ICGG 2018 - Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Geometry and Graphics. ICGG 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 809. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95588-9_197

4. Ling, R. (2015). ''Mosaics. In A Companion to Roman Art'', B.E. Borg (Ed.). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118886205.ch14

5.Cohen, Ada. The Alexander Mosaic: Stories of Victory and Defeat. Cambridge [u.a.: Univ. Press, 1997.

6.Dwyer, Eugene. “The Unified Plan of the House of the Faun.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 60, no. 3 (2001): 328–43.

7.Kuttner, Ann L. “Roman Art during the Republic.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic, edited by Harriet I. Flower, 2nd ed., 348–76. Cambridge Companions to the Ancient World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014

8.Bohm JC. On Making Mosaics. Occupational Therapy: the Official Journal of the Association of Occupational Therapists. 1962;25(3):29-31. doi:10.1177/030802266202500320

9.Christine Mitchell Havelock, Hellenistic Art: The Art of the Classical World from the Death of Alexander the Great to the Battle of Actium (New York Graphic Society LTD, 1981), pp. 252-253.

10.Ada Cohen, Art in the era of Alexander the Great: paradigms of manhood and their cultural traditions (Cambridge: New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).